


here began all my dreams

by eddiespaghetti (foxwatson)



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Fix-It, IT Chapter Two Spoilers, M/M, please take this rage-induced fix it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-15
Updated: 2019-09-15
Packaged: 2020-10-18 23:10:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,456
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20647241
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/foxwatson/pseuds/eddiespaghetti
Summary: “Rich, Richie, hey. Let’s - I say fuck this, let’s stick together, yeah? What the fuck are they gonna do if we don’t?”When the group splits up to find their artifacts, Richie and Eddie decide to stick together - and it changes everything, because I said so.This is basically just one big chapter 2 spoiler because it follows many of the major plot points of the film from Eddie's perspective - if you haven't seen the movie there's no way this will make sense.





	here began all my dreams

**Author's Note:**

> all the cool kids write chapter 2 fix-it fics now right?? well. either way i saw chapter 2 again today and this came spilling out and i couldn't stop it even a little bit, i literally sat and wrote like 10,000 words in one sitting. so. enjoy?
> 
> just to reiterate from the summary - this will make the most sense if you've like just seen chapter 2 pretty recently! i use some dialogue word for word, and sometimes i skim over a scene because i'm assuming you've seen the movie.
> 
> title credit to the smiths' back to the old house, because it's on the official loser's club playlist which i was listening to today and thinking about reddie and i went Oh God, Oh Fuck, and now i've made it better again.

As soon as Eddie gets back to the Derry Town House from the Chinese restaurant and goes up to his own room, he has a panic attack. He leans back against the door, lets it close behind him, and he fumbles through his jacket for his inhaler, smooth plastic slipping against his fingertips until he finally gets a grip and brings it to his mouth, forcing himself to take a deep breath.

The stupidest fucking part is that he’s not even having a panic attack because of the goddamn clown - even with the fortune cookies full of eyeballs and spiders and the dead heads floating in the fish tank, even with his dumb fucking pointy teeth, the clown is not the worst thing about any of this. The worst thing is that Eddie Kaspbrak is 40 years old, and he’s showed up in a town he barely remembered and he’s suddenly been confronted with the fact that he’s fucking miserable.

It’s funny, because he never would have described himself as happy. It’s not like he thought everything was perfect. But in forgetting his friends, forgetting what they did, forgetting that he’d ever stood up to his mother, Eddie had forgotten the only time he ever had been happy.

He remembers, now. He remembers throwing his fanny pack away in the yard in front of Neibolt, he remembers the way he felt like he could do anything for his friends, and then it turned out he really could. He cleaned up a bathroom covered in blood, he kicked the leper in the face, crawled around in a dirty sewer with a broken arm and made it out alive.

His mother making him move away was worse than he’d even thought when it happened - he hadn’t just lost his friends, lost Richie - he’d lost himself.

He looks down at his shaking hands, and rubs them over his face.

_ “So wait, Eddie, you got married? What, to like a woman?” _

Eddie shudders.

He wants to call Myra right away, and stand up to her while he still remembers - but if he’s up here too long Richie will leave and Eddie won’t even get to say goodbye. He starts packing - and it’s the worst job he’s ever done, throwing all his shit in suitcases, left and right, but he can’t be bothered to care. He grabs a suitcase in each hand and goes barrelling down the staircase - and thank God Richie and Ben and Bev are all still there, only all of them look worse, again-

“What’d I miss?”

“What’d you expect, Eduardo? Some incredibly fucked up shit, like always,” Richie says, walking back into the bar, clearly interested in getting more alcohol.

Eddie leaves his bags on the stairs and follows him without a second thought, just like always, just like when they were kids, like a fucking moth to a flame.

Richie goes behind the bar and pours two glasses of - something, He hands one to Eddie, and Eddie takes it and throws it back gratefully.

Ben and Bev follow them into the room, and Bev starts to explain. What follows is easily one of the most fucked up conversations Eddie’s ever been a part of, which is frankly impressive considering the competition.

The entire concept that Bev has seen them all die, knows how they might die, is something Eddie really can’t dwell on. He needs to make it out of here alive, he has to, because he can’t stomach the idea of dying when his whole life has been such an obvious, cowardly waste.

He’s tempted to get himself another drink, but instead he just keeps shooting looks at Richie, relieved that just like always, they seem to be on the same wavelength. Not to say Richie isn’t still annoying as all shit, because he clearly is, but Richie was his best friend out of the Loser’s Club without question, and there was a reason for that.

Bill and Mike arrive, and they don’t make it any better. Mike specifically says they need to  _ remember _ like there’s any more fucked up shit Eddie needs to remember when actually he’d like to forget some of the things he already knows.

Maybe if he could forget the last 27 years of his life, that would help.

They all go, and he follows, because no matter how badly he wants to leave, he doesn’t want to leave alone. He sticks close to Richie, but as long as they’re all together, it feels significantly better.

Obviously that means that once they find Stan’s shower caps in the clubhouse, Mike says they all have to split up.

He looks at Richie, checking, and Richie’s already shaking his head, which keeps Eddie from freaking out entirely.

Still, he feels the need to voice his own protest. “Uh, I’ve gotta, I gotta say, statistically speaking, you look at survival scenarios, we’re gonna do much better as a group.”

Richie quickly backs him up, adding in, “Yeah, splitting up would be dumb, man, okay? We gotta go together, alright? We were together that summer!”

Mike just shakes his head, though, and Bill agrees, and suddenly everyone’s just fucking wandering off on their own, including Richie, in what seems like sheer exasperation.

For a moment, Eddie just stands there, watching everyone. Mike looks back at him, though, and Eddie walks off, too - only he keeps an eye on Richie. Once he’s sure they’re both out of everyone else’s sight, Eddie jogs up beside him.

“Rich, Richie, hey. Let’s - I say fuck this, let’s stick together, yeah? What the fuck are they gonna do if we don’t?”

Richie looks over at him, clearly surprised for a moment. Then he leans over and nudges his shoulder against Eddie. “Yeah, alright you fucking scaredycat, let’s do this.”

“Hey shut the fuck up, asshole, I can do this by myself if I have to-”

Only Richie grabs him this time, his hand around Eddie’s arm, and Eddie’s the one that gets pulled up short. “Look you were the one talking about survival scenarios but I agree it’s probably smarter, so come on Eddie Spaghetti, let’s go find some old shit.”

Eddie blinks at him until Richie drops his hand. “I hate it when you call me that, we’re 40 fucking years old, Richie.”

“And you haven’t changed a bit.”

Eddie scoffs, but he falls into step with Richie easily, walking down the streets of Derry, thinking of what he did that summer. “You know I wasn’t even there when you guys fought, I was trapped at home with my mom, this entire thing is really just ridiculous for me because I was busy having a goddamn broken arm. And what did you even do without me there to hang out with you, huh?”

Richie looks at him, almost offended, but then he laughs a little. “Alright, fair point, I probably would have been hanging out with you if it wasn’t for your mom calling us all dirty losers or whatever and saying we’d never get to see you again.”

“God, what a bitch. She just-” And Eddie doesn’t want to do this, he didn’t want to have this moment in front of Richie, but suddenly it’s sort of happening anyways. “She ruined my life, you know? I went back for my stupid medication because she made me and then she made me move away and I forgot - I forgot the medications were fake, I forgot you - all of you guys, and if I hadn’t maybe I wouldn’t be fucking like this, maybe I’d be-”

“Eds, hey, breathe.” Richie’s standing in front of him now, hands on his shoulders, and Eddie tries to match his deep in and out breaths. He doesn’t even think to reach for his inhaler before he’s already breathing normally.

He laughs, a little hysterically. “Sorry. Sorry, Rich. I just- I’m a little fucked up.”

Richie laughs, too, without humor. “Yeah, well, tell me about it. Aren’t we all.”

They’re still recovering when they stumble on The Capitol. Eddie looks up at it and smiles, absently fond. “How many hours you think we spent in that place?”

“Too many to count, probably,” Richie replies, but the smile that almost crosses his face drops as it looks like he realizes something. He walks up to the busted up door and sticks his hand through and Eddie is immediately alarmed.

“Rich, what the fuck, don’t stick your arm through broken glass you don’t even know what kind of shit could be on there-”

But Richie’s already got the door opened and his arm back out, so he waves his free hand at Eddie as he holds the door open. He raises his eyebrows with a smile, and Eddie flips him off.

“Shut up, asshole.”

“Didn’t even say anything.”

“Yeah, well, you were thinking it, I may have forgotten you for almost 30 fucking years but I still know you well enough for that.”

The door closes behind them, and when Eddie turns, Richie’s face is doing something sort of funny.

Eddie frowns at him. “What? What is it?”

Richie shrugs, and goes over to the Street Fighter machine. “Nothing. It’s nothing. Just. Been a long fucking time, huh?”

“Yeah, just factually 27 years is over half of our lives, so.”

Richie shakes his head and turns around. He spots the token machine, then. Eddie watches as he pulls a quarter out of his pocket and drops it in the machine. He’s fully planning to make some sarcastic remark, but the machine actually still fucking works somehow, and Richie pulls the token out to hold it up and look at it.

“Do you think that’s it, then?” Eddie asks him.

Still looking at the token, Richie nods. “Yeah. That’s - this is where I spent the whole time you were gone, basically. In here, playing Street Fighter. Picked the wrong partner once, though, accidentally ended up playing with Henry Bower’s asshole cousin. He-” Richie pauses, looking at Eddie and then away again. “He basically called Bowers over and they pulled the same kind of shit they always do and made me leave. I think I went to the park - you know the big Paul Bunyan statue?”

“You think we should go?”

Richie sticks the token in his pocket and shrugs. “I don’t remember what else happened, so probably. You still wanna come?”

“Well I’m not splitting up now, asshole, come on.”

He grabs Richie’s arm and yanks him out of the arcade, trying to harness whatever courage he can find.

For whatever reason, Richie doesn’t pull away once they’re outside - he just lets Eddie keep holding onto his wrist, and Eddie just keeps holding onto it, because Richie’s letting him. To be fair, they were always touchy kids, sharing hammocks and grabbing each other at the first sign of danger - maybe it’s no surprise that it’s Eddie’s first automatic response again now.

When they get to the park, Richie looks up at the Paul Bunyan statue in abject horror.

“What? Rich?”

“That thing - that fucking thing came to life and tried to eat me, after Bowers and his cousin chased me out of the arcade, holy fucking shit.”

“...The Paul Bunyan statue? Really?”

“Okay shut the fuck up, like you didn’t see like, a fucking homeless man or whatever-”

“It was a leper! And it was fucking disgusting for your information-”

There’s a laugh that interrupts them. The kind of laugh that sends the hair on the back of Eddie’s neck shooting straight up. Eddie knows that laugh. He reaches for Richie instantly, instinctually, and Richie’s reaching right back, grabbing onto Eddie’s arms as Eddie grabs onto him, holds one of his hands, and then Richie’s half stepping in front of him, too, standing between Eddie and the fucking clown.

It is the clown, because of course it is, sitting on top of the statue. “Richie and Eddie, sitting in a tree, D-Y-I-N-G.”

“That’s not even the right number of letters, you fucking-” Richie clearly mutters out of instinct, but he’s cut off as a pile of fliers come fluttering down in front of them - fliers specifically for Richie’s funeral.

“I was going to ask you to play Truth or Dare, Richie, but I don’t think you want to play either one when poor little Eds is right there! Should I tell him? Do you think he knows? Because I know, Richie - I know your secret, your dirty little secret,” and he’s singing, of all fucking things, and Eddie pulls Richie around by the shoulder.

“Rich, Richie, what the fuck, let’s get out of here!”

“Eddie, I-”

“Tell me later, asshole! Let’s get the fuck out of here!”

And this time he’s fully holding Richie’s hand while they’re running away, and he doesn’t care, doesn’t care who sees them or who doesn’t, he only cares that he’s got Richie behind him and they’re both getting the fuck out and away from that clown.

Eddie stops once they’re back in town and away from people, out of breath and on the verge of a panic attack, fumbling for his inhaler again. He’s doubled over a little, leaning on his knees, and he feels like his lungs are going to explode. Richie reaches into his jacket for him, pulls it out, and hands it to him. Eddie nods at him before he takes a puff, inhaling deeply before he continues to catch his breath.

“Okay so, so now that we’re not gonna die, you wanna tell me what the fuck that was?”

“What the… What what was?”

Standing up, Eddie brushes his hands off his jeans and tucks his inhaler back in his jacket. “What the clown was saying about a secret. I’m assuming it’s whatever you weren’t telling me at the arcade, either, so, come on, dipshit, spill.”

Richie scoffs. “I’m not gonna tell you that, the clown was just making shit up, I’m not-”

“Isn’t the point of this whole thing to remember and shit? I feel like it isn’t gonna do what it’s supposed to do if you don’t even talk about it, that can’t possibly be healthy-”

“And obviously you’re the only one who knows what’s fucking healthy, Mr. Health Nut himself, god you’re so fucking annoying-”

“You’re one to talk about being annoying! Has anyone ever been more annoying than you? And now you’re just trying to distract me, it’s not fucking working, now what the fuck is the secret!”

He’s resorted to poking Richie in the chest for emphasis by the time he finally finishes a sentence, and Richie’s just standing there looking more and more- nervous, actually. It’s weird to see him look so genuinely nervous. The man who was once a boy who took a baseball bat to a terrifying clown monster, and now there’s something he doesn’t even want to tell Eddie.

Realizing the moment is all wrong, Eddie cracks, and takes a different approach. “Rich. Hey. You don’t have to tell me, I just… If there really is something, do you really want the clown to be the only one who knows? He can’t use it against you if it’s not a secret.”

Richie’s face scrunches up like he’s gonna cry, and he ends up looking over Eddie’s shoulder, at the wall behind him. “You know what you said earlier about your mom? About how she ruined your life? Well. I- I left this town and I forgot something almost as bad as your fucking placebos. I forgot… I forgot I wasn’t straight.”

Eddie’s mouth goes dry, and he tries to swallow, tries to come up with a better response, but instead he just croaks out, “What?”

“I still lived here the first time I realized I was attracted to dudes and when I moved away I fucking forgot, I forgot all about it. It was still always kind of there, but it all got lumped in together, and I forgot about the first time I realized so it took me a long time to know once I moved away, because I kept telling myself if it was true I would have known already, and then I still didn’t realize how much - how much I’d forgotten until I was here.”

He glances at Eddie’s face and then away again, like he’s utterly terrified of the reaction.

Eddie does the only thing he can think to do, which is to pull Richie into a hug. He doesn’t say anything, because he’s afraid to, at least for the moment, but he can wrap his arms around Richie’s shoulders and hold him close, unafraid of that.

Richie presses his face against Eddie’s shoulder, and wraps his arms around Eddie’s waist, and they just stand there in an alleyway, holding each other.

“This is so fucked up,” Richie says against his shoulder, sounding close to tears.

Eddie laughs, because it’s true, and because Richie always makes him laugh. He sets Richie off, and then they’re both just standing there in the alleyway giggling, which probably looks even crazier.

After a while, Richie steps back, patting Eddie on the shoulder before he looks around. “Oh shit! This is the alleyway where we brought Ben - where you patched him up. We’re like right around the corner from the pharmacy.”

“Oh.” Eddie thinks about that summer - and the fact that he called in a refill for his inhaler before he ever got into town. “I think we probably need to go in there. For me.”

Richie nods at him, and pats him on the back. “Hey, I got your back, Eds. We managed it last time, we can handle it this time.”

Eddie nods back, and they walk together into the pharmacy. He goes up to the counter with Richie right beside him.

Just as Eddie’s thinking it, Richie whispers, “Holy shit, is that Mr. Keene? Is that the same fucking guy?”

Trying to stifle a snicker, Eddie elbows Richie in the ribs, and Richie winces but starts laughing himself, trying to pretend he’s an adult by looking at the nearby displays instead.

Mr. Keene approaches them with a disapproving look on his face. “Yes?”

“I, uh, I called in a prescription for Kaspbrak? Edward?”

“Eddie Kaspbrak. I remember you.” He glances over. “And you must be Richie Tozier. I thought I kicked you out of this store.”

“Well, it’s been 27 years, I was thinking statute of limitations was probably up by now,” Richie replies with a shit-eating grin, and Eddie smacks him on the arm for good measure.

Richie’s still playing up rubbing at his non-injury when Mr. Keene goes digging in the prescriptions.

That’s when Eddie remembers.

It was before the trip where Greta Keene had written LOSER on his cast, before the trip where she’d bothered to tell him all his medications were fake. She’d been making fun of him like always, but when he went to leave, he’d heard his mother calling from downstairs. Only it hadn’t just been his mother down there.

“Here you go,” Mr. Keene says, and Eddie nearly jumps out of his skin.

Richie gives him a look and takes the prescription for him, mumbling a hasty, “Thanks!” before he pulls Eddie over by the arm.

“What, what is it? Did you remember something?”

“Yeah, uh, not that I really wanted to.”

“Yeah, neither do any of us. Was it here?”

Eddie nods, and he starts towards the door that leads downstairs. Fortunately, he can feel Richie close behind him, and it gives him all the courage he needs to actually open the door and walk down.

The basement is cleaner than he remembers it being that day when he was a kid - but that fucking curtain is still there.

“Why is that fucking curtain still there?”

“Wait,” Richie says, and this time he’s the one taking Eddie’s hand, so they’re walking up to the curtain hand in hand, both clutching at each other in absolute fear. They make eye contact and reach out, using their free hands to pull the curtain back together, as Richie silently mouths “One, two, three!”

On three - there’s nothing there. Thank god.

Just as Eddie sighs with relief, he sees hands on Richie’s neck.

“Ohwhatthefuck-” is all he manages to get out, and the leper has its hands on Richie, and he’s screaming, and the leper’s trying to stick its fucking tongue in Richie’s mouth, and that is truly the last fucking straw, that is more than enough for one day, so Eddie grabs the leper’s shoulder’s to pull him off, and then he gets his hands around its neck, and that makes it turn on him - and honestly that’s fine. Still, he tightens his hands and actually - actually it feels like he’s winning, a little. That’s more than he expected, so he keeps squeezing, wondering if it’s even possible that he actually has the upper hand on this thing - when it starts vomiting.

Eddie is so disgusted and horrified that he wants to die, he can barely move, but that of course is when Richie grabs him and shouts, “Okay Eds, let’s fucking go!”

Richie drags him up the stairs and out the door, and they’re running then, just running and running, presumably for the Derry Town House, because clearly they’ve done enough for one afternoon.

They walk through the lobby, and Bev only gets out as much as “Richie, Eddie, what-”

Richie just responds, “Don’t wanna talk about it! Not til Eds isn’t covered in leper vomit.”

Eddie starts laughing, then at the sheer absurdity of it all, but he’s so fucking grateful that he’s got Richie with him, that Richie’s going to help him clean off and that neither of them had to go through any of that alone.

They get up to Eddie’s bathroom, and Richie starts wetting a washcloth just as Eddie takes off his jacket and sticks his face directly in the sink.

Once he’s gotten most of it off his mouth and face, he pulls back out of the sink and takes a deep breath, pushing his hair back. “God that was so fucking disgusting. I hate that thing.”

Richie laughs a little and hands him the washcloth. “Yeah, you know I never really got a good look at it, and you being you I kind of wondered if you were exaggerating but in person and up close that is - that thing is really fucking ugly. Not to mention the tongue.”

“...Yeah the tongue wasn’t always there but I think the point is the same.”

“The point being?”

Eddie looks down at the dirty washcloth, wringing it in his hands. “The point being, uh-”

Except, of course, the door swings shut and oh God there’s Henry Fucking Bowers with a knife, and he still has a fucking mullet, and he looks like if someone just sort of shoved teenage Bowers in a box for 30 years only worse.

The first thought he has is to shove Richie out of the way, and Bowers comes straight for him, and Eddie closes his eyes but instead he just hears Richie yell and then he opens his eyes to chaos.

Bowers is in front of him, the knife is like an inch from his face, and Richie is holding Bowers off.

Eddie grabs Bowers’ wrist and tries to twist, or something, and he drops the knife, and Richie picks it up and stabs him.

There’s noise on the stairs, so the two of them go around Bowers and out of the room, meeting Ben and Bev coming up to find them.

“Are you guys okay?” Bev asks, looking them over.

“Fucking Bowers is in there - Richie stabbed him, but-”

Ben goes in, after him, and Eddie leans back against the wall, searching for his inhaler again. Richie finds it first, hands it to him, and Eddie takes a puff.

When he exhales, he leans forward, pressing his forehead against Richie’s shoulder. “Oh I am so fucking sick of this.”

Ben, still in the other room, yells, “He got away! Does anyone know where Mike is?”

Richie brings his arms up around Eddie and mutters, “Oh sick of it doesn’t even begin to cover it, Eddie Spaghetti.”

“Told you not to fucking call me that.”

They all pile into Richie’s ridiculous red car and Eddie drives them to the library like a bat out of hell. He is from New York, after all - Derry streets are nothing compared to that.

The blue corvette is parked outside, so they all go running in, and Henry is there, on top of Mike - there’s a tomahawk of all fucking things on the ground, and Eddie runs over, grabs it, and bashes it into Bowers’ skull like he’s kind of wanted to do his entire life.

It makes a sickening sound, and Bowers falls to the side, off of Mike.

“Well that was long overdue. Get it, cause we’re in a library,” Eddie can hear Richie say, but when he turns around, Richie’s throwing up. Ben and Bev are going for Mike, so Eddie goes back over to Richie, tries to push his hair off his forehead and pull him up to standing.

“Rich, are you okay?”

“I think this might be the worst fucking day of my life.”

“Oh it’s definitely the worst day of mine.”

With both of them breathing, and no one else trying to kill them, at least for a moment, so it seems, Eddie pulls a handkerchief out of his pants and hands it to Richie so he can wipe off.

“You’ve gotta be kidding me, Eds.”

“Shut up, asshole, I like to be prepared. Do you want to have vomit on your face until you can wash it off? Let me tell you, it’s not fucking fun.”

Richie laughs, closing his eyes, and wipes off his face before he tries to hand back the handkerchief.

“Yeah, definitely keep that I don’t want it back.”

“Right, right.”

Richie shoves it in his pocket and they both look at each other.

Mike says, “Where’s Bill?” and Eddie already knows all hell is going to break loose. He squeezes his eyes shut. God, all he wants is one minute. One fucking minute of a reprieve, one break to spend some time with his friends - but he’s not going to get one.

Eddie can hear Richie go over, and Mike’s calling Bill on the phone, and all Eddie wants is just one chance.

God he still hasn’t called Myra. They all just keep going and going.

“He’s going to fight It alone. Alone!” Mike tells them when he hangs up. He keeps going, and Ben and Bev are talking about it, but Eddie just keeps looking at Richie and trying not to think about how much he wants to leave.

“The same place the ritual needs to be performed,” Mike continues, and Eddie knows where he means, but God he wants to pretend he doesn’t.

“Oh, we’re not gonna like this, are we?” he mutters under his breath, and Richie walks over to him even as Ben curses and Bev stands and all of them know, together, that they have to go back to Neibolt. That fucking house.

They all start walking, and they’re probably going to pile into Richie’s car again, but Eddie… Eddie has to do something first, so he pulls Richie aside before they get out the door.

“When I was a kid the leper… it used to ask me what I was looking for.”

Richie blinks at him. “What?”

“Shut up, I’m trying- I used to walk by Neibolt and it used to call me like that it used to ask me what I was looking for and I used to feel sick to my stomach because it wouldn’t have made any sense to anybody else but I knew what it meant because it was some shit my mom used to tell me about. She told me there were these- she told me the homeless guys that used to live under the bridge were full of diseases and if they asked me for anything I was supposed to run away and that they’d try to lure me under there and shit and she… She used to talk about how they’d do  _ anything _ for money and if they asked me anything like that I should run. It was awful, everything she said was awful and it wasn’t true but it scared the shit out of me, and I think it was because-” His words get stuck in his throat, but he takes a deep breath, leaves his inhaler in his pocket, and forces himself to say it. “I think it was because she knew I was gay and she tried to scare it out of me.” He pauses, finally, and laughs in a way that sounds like he might cry. “Only I guess it worked.”

Richie’s expression is different now, and just like the reverse of the alleyway, he tugs Eddie into his arms. “Oh God we’re both so fucked up.”

  
  


“Tell me about it, Trashmouth.”

With a laugh, Richie holds him just a little bit tighter, and they stand there until Ben and Bev and Mike start calling for them.

They separate slowly, and they still pause just to sort of look at each other. Richie, carefully, reaches out and rubs at the top of Eddie’s ear.

“You, uh, you had some-”

“Oh, yeah, thanks,” Eddie says, and he rubs at his own ear as they turn to walk out the door.

They do all pile back into Richie’s car, and they drive to Neibolt as quickly as possible. Bill’s still standing on the steps when they get there.

Bill argues, and they argue back, and Eddie sticks close to Richie, unable to shake thinking of the last time they were there, the time he got his arm broken and Richie kept close to him, and they sat there looking at each other, both terrified they were about to get eaten by some kind of fucked up clown monster. Then Richie had set his arm and practically carried him out of the house.

For all his own protests - Eddie was pretty sure he’d been in love with Richie. He’d just been terrified - a scared little kid, scared of himself, and how he felt, and how Richie made him feel, but none of it was ever enough to keep him from going back, from spending as much time with Richie as he possibly could.

It seems like they’re going to go in - but no one’s really making a move directly towards the door.

“So… does somebody wanna… say something?” he asks, looking between Bill and Richie and the rest of the Losers.

“Richie said it the best when we were here last,” Bill replies.

“I did?” Richie asks, and he looks at Eddie, and Eddie looks at him and fights the urge to smile - even now.

Richie cycles through some options before he lands on, “Let’s kill this fucking clown,” and even Eddie feels a little thrill of courage at that - a little of the old feeling he had the first time they beat it, the feeling that first time Richie had yelled  _ “Welcome to the Loser’s Club, asshole!” _ like maybe a group of losers could kill a monster after all.

They all walk carefully inside the house, and Richie keeps cracking jokes because it’s his default setting. They get all the way to the kitchen, to the door down to the basement, before the door slams behind them, and then it’s him and Richie and Bill trapped in the kitchen.

Of course the asshole has to get in one more before they even get to the fucking sewer.

They can hear Ben yelling, and he and Bill are trying to get the door open but it won’t budge, and the old refrigerator just starts fucking vibrating like something inside of it is trying to get out and Eddie’s right next to Richie like he didn’t even have to think about it, grabbing at his wrist.

Stan’s body is inside the fridge, all fucked up and twisted, and Eddie feels like his heart is going to explode it’s beating so quickly, because that’s exactly how Pennywise had been all twisted up in there the day Eddie had been in the kitchen alone.

“Get back!” he hisses, tugging at Richie, and both of them stumble back from the fridge.

Stan’s head screams and rolls out of the fridge, off of his body, and Richie’s yelling and Eddie feels like his lungs are going to explode too, and he slaps a hand over his own mouth to try and stop himself from being so fucking loud.

Stan’s head starts  _ talking _ , of course it does, and Eddie reaches over and just clings to Richie’s arm with both of his hands, biting at his lips and closing his eyes, trying to get himself under control, knowing he’s losing it quickly.

“You’ve gotta be fucking kidding,” Richie says loudly, and Eddie opens his eyes to probably the worst thing he’s ever seen - Stan’s decapitated, decomposing head with some kind of spider legs sticking out of it, one of them still pushing its way out of his eye.

He gags a little, fighting the urge to throw up, and he lets go of Richie just to search for his inhaler. He’s still looking when the thing runs towards him and he kicks it just out of instinct, just to get it away, and it goes scurrying in the other direction.

Bill and Richie go to follow it, and Eddie finally finds his inhaler, taking a puff of it before he puts it away.

Richie comes back first, walking over to him.

“Eds, are you okay?”

“Uh, I-” Then the drool comes dripping down, right in between them. Eddie knows, he knows before either of them even bother to look up.

Only Richie does look up, and he says, “Oh, there he is,” and the thing comes down out of the ceiling right on Richie, going right for his face, and Eddie feels like his heart has already stopped.

Bill is screaming and trying to pull it off, and Eddie can’t tell what he’s saying, and Richie’s screaming, and the thing is on top of him, and if Eddie goes over and kicks it he might hit Richie and Bill keeps looking at him, and why did the thing have to land on Richie, why couldn’t it have landed on him, why didn’t he get in the way, why didn’t he stop it.

He doesn’t have a weapon on hand, he doesn’t really know what to use, but Bill is still yelling, and when Eddie looks over, there’s a knife right beside them.

All it takes is one more look at Richie, struggling for his life, and Eddie goes over and grabs the knife and plunges it right into the center of the thing’s head.

Ben and Bev and Mike stumble into the room right as Eddie stabs it again, and Bill pulls back and Eddie leaves the knife in and the thing staggers away, away from Richie’s face, thank God.

“Eds,” Richie mumbles, coughing.

“Gonna - gonna need that handkerchief again, huh?” Eddie, with his hands still shaking, searches Richie’s pockets until he finds the handkerchief and uses it to wipe some of the drool and the ick off of Richie’s face until Richie sits up and starts wiping, too.

Eddie sits properly on the ground right in front of him, exhausted.

They’re not even down there yet.

“Stick together this time, guys, g-g-getting us apart is exactly what it wants,” Bill says, and Eddie looks up at him before he looks over at Richie.

Richie leans forward until his head hits Eddie’s shoulder, and he groans. “Think there’s any chance they could just do it without us,” he mumbles, muffling it against Eddie’s jacket.

He huffs, and it’s almost a laugh. “Yeah, fat chance, Rich. Come on, we gotta get up.”

They stand up together, and the two of them stay in the back as they all head for the well and make their way down together.

They’re only in the cistern when Bev stops and turns, and Eddie climbs up the middle, moving past her, because the only thing he can think about is getting out of the literal chest-high sewer water.

Of course, It comes out of the water and pulls her down, because they still haven’t even started the ritual and It’s still fucking with them.

Ben and Bill dive in after her first, and Richie moves, but Eddie grabs him and holds him back, shaking his head.

“Eds, we gotta-”

“Rich, they can get her, you know they can, we have to stick together.”

Nodding, Richie squeezes Eddie’s shoulder and sits down next to him. It only takes a moment before everyone else is coming up for air, surfacing out of the water and swimming back up.

“Mike, where do we go from here?” Richie calls out - and, well, that’s a good question.

They all get onto the sort of makeshift island in the middle of the cistern, and Mike points at a strange symbol in the middle. Eddie edges a little closer to Richie, out of fear, out of the fact that he’s cold, out of the fact that he can’t fucking seem to stop, whatever. He might die down here, and this might be the last couple of hours of his life, so he’s not going to analyze it. If he makes it out, he can analyze.

It turns out the symbol is a trap door, because of fucking course it is, and Mike throws it open and just jumps right in like it’s nothing. Eddie doesn’t envy him going down first, but he doesn’t want to go down last. Still, once Bill and Ben are in and Bev is starting down, Eddie turns to Richie.

“I think I changed my mind, I don’t think I can do this. I couldn’t - for the last 27 years I couldn’t even stand up to my mom, I basically married her, I can’t stop taking my fucking meds even though I know they’re placebos, I can’t even get the guts up to call my wife and tell her I want a divorce, there’s no fucking way I can do this.”

“Eds, Eddie, hey,” and Bev’s sticking her head out of the door, but Richie’s getting directly in his line of sight so Eddie doesn’t really care anymore. “Look at me. You fought It today, you killed Henry Bowers, you got covered in fucking leper vomit for the second time in your life and you lived to tell the tale. You saved my life upstairs. Maybe you weren’t brave for the last 27 years - but you’re braver than you think. You’re brave now. Braver than I am, probably.”

Eddie resists the urge to do something enormously embarrassing like blush, and instead he shoves Richie. “Don’t sell yourself short, asshole, you did plenty. You’re right, though - we can do it together.” He makes eye contact with Richie, and grabs his hand. “Together. Right?”

Richie nods at him. “Together.”

They have to let go to climb down, but as soon as they’re through, they take hands again.

Bev walks up once they’re all able to stand again, and hands him the spike from the yard. “Here, take it,” she says. “It kills monsters.”

“Does it?” Eddie asks, looking between her and Richie.

“Yeah. If you believe it does,” she finishes.

He looks down at the piece of fence and shoves it through his belt so he doesn’t have to hold it yet.

They all walk into a big, open room with what looks like some kind of meteor strike in the center. Eddie’s palms are sweating, but he refuses to let go of Richie’s hand. One by one, they all squeeze into the space in the middle, in between the spikes coming out of the ground, and Mike sets up the ritual there.

It goes simply enough. They all pull out their artifacts and toss them in. Bill and Bev and Ben all have paper, so Eddie’s the first one to toss in something that definitely isn’t going to burn well, and Richie, next to him, leans over to whisper, “That’s never gonna fucking burn.”

Richie throws in his arcade token, of course, so Eddie elbows him. “Yours isn’t gonna burn either, asshole, it’s fucking metal, shut up.”

Mike throws in a rock, so they both share a look, but then the ceiling fucking opens up and there are lights coming down and they have much bigger fish to fry.

He’s holding hands with Richie on one side and Bev on the other, and they’re all chanting, practically screaming, and he’s trying not to look, because he can’t look at the lights, and he’s so fucking nervous but it seems like it actually might be working, so he tries to peek - and then there’s that fucking balloon.

If Eddie could just never see another fucking balloon as long as he lives, that would be fantastic.

Richie says something, but Mike tells them to keep chanting, so Eddie tries, and he holds tighter and tighter to Richie’s hand like it’s his only fucking lifeline, but then the balloon keeps growing and the lid doesn’t stand a fucking chance.

He grabs at the fence spike in his belt, pulling it out, because his first thought is to pop the balloon, but Richie’s pulling him away, yelling his name, so Eddie goes, lets Richie pull him back out of the center, away from the spikes, back towards the wall.

The ritual didn’t work - it was never going to work.

Mike lied.

The clown is there, and absolute chaos erupts.

It’s enormous, and it’s got fucking giant spider legs, and it’s chasing them, and there’s tentacles thrashing around, and Richie has his hand, still, thank god, he’s still got Richie, and they’re running and Eddie can barely see what’s happening it’s all so dark and everyone’s shouting, he’s probably shouting, too, and he and Richie find a little cave, some passageway that splits off from the main cavern, and they hide there.

At first it seems like they might be safe, and then It shoots a tentacle or something down after them, and they run until they hit the end of the cavern - and some doors.

“Oh absolutely fucking not, I’ve done this before,” Richie says.

Eddie looks over at him, and looks back at the tentacle, which looks like it’s reached the end of its rope, so to speak. “I mean we could probably just. Not go through a door. Like what’s it gonna do, get us out? We can’t leave everyone else and anyways, probably not, it’s probably just worse behind the door, so let’s just sit right here until it leaves us alone, right?”

“It’s not gonna leave us alone, Eds.”

“I just mean it’s gonna go after the others at some point, right? And we need to find them but we need to go back and regroup, so let’s just- let’s just hold here for a second.”

They get as close to the doors as possible, but not leaning against them, and the tentacle doesn’t come any closer, it just sort of hovers there, darting around like it can’t reach any further. Eddie turns and presses his face against Richie’s shoulder.

“Thank fucking Christ,” he sighs into Richie’s jacket.

Carefully, Richie reaches up and pushes back Eddie’s hair, getting it all off his face, and back in order. “You look like a mess.”

“We’re in a fucking - God we’re  _ under _ a sewer, Rich, what the fuck did you expect?”

Richie laughs. “No, I just. I don’t know. It’s a little funny to see you like this, you’re always so neat the rest of the time-”

“The rest of the time? Like when we’re not being actively chased by a fucking homophobic trauma clown, gee, thanks, asshole-”

That just sets Richie off even worse, and he breaks out into helpless giggles as he presses his head against Eddie’s; his temple against the top of Eddie’s head.

The tentacle seems to have backed off, and one of the doors is rattling, but Eddie takes this one precious moment he’s getting and locks it away, keeping it somewhere he hopes he never forgets it, no matter what else happens.

They pull apart so they can turn to face the door, and they hold it shut themselves until it stops rattling. Bev and Ben are yelling somewhere, and there’s noises back in the main cavern, so they look at each other, and nod, and head back out.

It has Mike in its clutches, something wrapped around him, and Richie throws a rock at it to get its attention.

Eddie knows this isn’t going to end well, but all he can think to do is to bend down and pick up some more rocks, hoping that he can help with the distraction, hoping that as long as he and Richie stick together, it’ll still be fine.

Only as he’s down, Richie shouts something and then just- stops in the middle. When he looks up, Richie’s caught there, in mid-air.

The deadlights. Of course.

The fence spike is still with Eddie, still in his belt, so he pulls it out and feels the weight of it in his hand. He remembers that was how Bev stopped it that day in Neibolt, when it tried to kill him, tried to kill all of them. Richie had been right there beside him - he’d told Eddie to look at him, kept him safe.

Even if it can’t kill the thing, the fence spike will hurt it - it’ll save Richie. That’s what matters. “If you believe it does,” he says softly, to himself.

Then he looks up, careful not to look too high, aims, and shouts, “Beep beep, motherfucker!” and throws.

It hits, with a disgusting noise, and Eddie catches Richie as he drops. They both go down, Richie in his arms, both of them fully laying down in the rocky crevice.

“Rich, Rich are you okay? Hey, hey, talk to me.”

“Wh- Eds-” And then Richie pulls him down even closer, their foreheads pressed together, so Eddie is laying completely on top of him, his weight completely on top of Richie, and Eddie thinks for a moment,  _ oh _ , and then a spike goes sailing over his head and hits the wall with a crunch.

“Oh my fucking God,” he says, rolling off of Richie and landing right next to him, laying on the ground.

“Yeah, come on,” Richie says, clearly recovered as he grabs Eddie’s hand and drags him, urges them all into the same cavern, away from It and all its fucking spikes and tentacles and arms.

This time, they all manage to stick together as they slide down into a cavern - and it’s one that It can’t fit into, stuck at the top, calling out for them.

“I hurt it, I know I did-” Eddie says.

“You almost died-”

“Not just now, Rich! Richie, not now, remember, remember earlier today?” The rest of the losers are all looking at them, and well, fuck, hopefully since the ritual was bullshit it doesn’t matter if Eddie broke the rules. “Richie and I were at the pharmacy today when we saw it, it turned into the leper, and I got my hands around its throat and I think - I think I almost hurt it. Something about it was vulnerable, whether it was because we stayed together, or-”

“All living things must abide by the laws of the shape they inhabit,” Mike says, and they all turn to look at him. “Eddie, that’s it. If we can make it something we can kill, we can kill it.”

“If we can make it smaller,” Richie says, looking at Eddie like he just put the fucking moon in the sky and - well, okay, Eddie’s feeling pretty good at this exact moment. Maybe it’s just the adrenaline or the near-death experience or the really gay shit that just happened, maybe it’s a combination of all of those things, but he smiles and puts his hand on the back of Richie’s neck, just for a second, and presses their foreheads together.

“Maybe we could lead it back towards the entrance?” Bev suggests, and they look over.

“If It was going to follow us, I think It would now,” Ben replies, reaching out and placing a hand on her shoulder. “We’ll have to think of something else.”

“...There’s more than one way to make someone small,” Mike says.

Richie looks at him, eyebrows raised, and Eddie’s feeling a similar skepticism.

“Just. Follow my lead, guys,” he says, and he heads out through another passageway.

They all follow him, and they come into the larger chamber again, behind It.

“I think we’ve all seen enough of you by now - you go after kids because they’re vulnerable, because they’re small. You’re too scared to face us in your real form. You know we could beat you.”

“There’s no fun in a fair fight, Mikey,” It replies, creeping closer to them.

“Mike’s right, you’re scared. You were scared when we beat you as kids and you’re even more afraid now. This is all just posing.”

As Bev’s words sink in, it actually looks like It shrinks, just a little. That’s all it takes.

All of them let loose, shout after shout, forcing themselves to be unafraid, forcing themselves to know they can beat it, because that’s the only way they can.

As soon as it’s nearly human sized, Richie goes over and rips off one of its legs. Bill takes one, Mike another, then Bev. Eddie grabs one, and It’s left defenseless, crawling on its hands, trying to get away.

Bill kicks it over, and plants his foot on it. “You killed my b-brother. Let’s see you now.”

It cowers. There’s no other word for it. Eddie sees the fence spike nearby, where it fell earlier, and grabs it. He picks it up again, takes it in hand, and shoves it right through Pennywise’s mouth.

Mike, then, reaches down into its chest, and pulls out its heart.

It’s disgusting, but it seems like the only way for all of them to finish it, in that moment.

They all put their hands together, Eddie’s overlapping with Richie’s and Ben’s and Bev’s and Bill’s and Mike’s, and they close their joined hands until they hear the horrible squelching.

Eddie closes his eyes, looks away as it happens, and Richie reaches down to take Eddie’s free hand in his.

Just like the rest of the day, there’s no fucking chance for rest, though, because as soon as the heart stops beating, the cavern starts to collapse.

“Oh for fuck’s sake,” Richie groans, and Eddie just pulls him along as they all start running. There’s running, and climbing, and more climbing, and more running. Eddie’s covered in grime and dirt and muck and at least a little blood, he’s got fucking monster heart goo all over his hand, but Richie’s right beside him all the way, and it seems like they’re all actually going to make it out, and that’s all that fucking matters.

Once they’re standing there in front of Neibolt, they watch the entire house collapse. Richie’s there, right next to Eddie. Bill and Mike are standing on one side of them, and Bev and Ben are on the other.

“Good fucking riddance,” Richie says.

“Always hated that house,” Eddie adds.

They all sort of look at each other, then, just waiting for the other shoe to drop.

Is anything else going to happen? Is It springing up out of the ruins? Is Bowers going to come running up out of nowhere?

There’s a solid minute where none of them move, just waiting. But it’s quiet. Just the sounds of their breathing, and the settling ruined house.

“M-maybe we should all go clean up,” Bill suggests.

“Quarry?” Bev asks, a shy sort of smile on her face.

“Oh, why the hell not, right?” Richie says, and the way that he smiles and tugs Eddie’s hand - there’s no fucking way Eddie could have said no.

They all go and they line up just like they used to when they were kids. They strip down, take off their shoes, and jump in, one by one. Richie flips Eddie off before he jumps in, and Eddie rolls his eyes and scoffs and follows him.

The water is fucking disgusting - Eddie really doesn’t feel any cleaner. “You guys - if any of us have open wounds this is so doing the opposite of cleaning right now, any cut we have is absolutely getting infected in this water.”

“Beep beep, Eddie,” Bev says with a grin, and Eddie scoffs and splashes water at her.

Richie absolutely loses his shit at that, laughing like it’s the funniest thing he’s ever heard, so Eddie goes over and dunks him under the water.

“Well thanks for that, asshole, now my glasses are cleaner.”

“Oh they’re absolutely not, dipshit, here,” Eddie replies, and he reaches out and gently takes Richie’s glasses off his face. He takes his own shirt and the water and cleans off the lenses, taking extra care around the crack in them - probably from Stan’s spider head.

Eddie holds the glasses up to the sunlight to see and then he glances over and catches sight of Richie, who’s giving him that look again.

“Hey, asshole, here’s your glasses back,” he says, absolutely ruining the moment.

Richie snorts and puts them back on.

“This really isn’t the same without Stan,” Bill says, and they all look over and experience the same somber moment. The one of them that didn’t make it out because he didn’t even make it in. They take a moment as a group, just like in the clubhouse, to think of him, to think of what it might have been like if he’d been here with them.

Once they’re cleaned up, except that they’re not at all cleaned up, they all head back to the Town House. Ben and Bev go off on their own, Bill goes to call his wife, Mike has to go back to the Library, and Eddie and Richie are left alone.

“So, uh - what are you gonna do now?” Eddie asks him.

“Well I’ve got tour dates in Reno,” Richie answers easily, and Eddie feels his throat tighten.

Right, of course. Richie has a life and a career to go back to. He lives in LA, and he has somewhere to be. Eddie feels like part of him thought he wouldn’t actually get out of the sewer, and so he didn’t have to plan for the future. Now the future stretches out ahead of him - and for this single, terrifying moment, it looks exactly like the last 27 years.

“You heading home to the wife?” Richie asks casually.

Eddie - well, okay it’s incredibly fucking embarrassing because Eddie just starts crying.

“Oh, shit, uh,”

“No, sorry, it’s fine, I, um, sorry,” and he heads upstairs, going for his room mostly for a tissue or something. Richie follows him, maybe because both of them suddenly don’t know what to do.

Eddie finds tissues and wipes off his face, blows his nose.

“God this is so fucking stupid, everyone else here obviously has a life, Ben and Bev are leaving together, Bill’s a writer and married, Mike gets to go off and see the world now I guess, we all get to leave and now I don’t want to. I don’t think I can go back, if I do she’ll make me stay, and I can’t - I don’t think I can stand up to her, I can kill a fucking demon from another dimension or something but I can’t tell my wife I want a divorce, let alone that I’m - why I want it.”

Richie sits down on Eddie’s bed like all the air’s gone out of him. “You really meant all that stuff, huh? It wasn’t just we might be dead in a little while talk?”

“I mean it was a little, that didn’t mean that I didn’t mean it, I spent 27 years forgetting all this shit and now I don’t want to - but what if we do again? What if we never see each other again? The one thing we had to bring us all back together is dead, Rich, and you’re gonna go be a comedian and I’m gonna go be a fucking risk analyst, that’s not even what I wanted to do, I thought when I was a kid I wanted to be a pilot, you know how much I loved Airwolf and Top Gun and now I just have - this miserable fucking life. What do I do?”

“Call her.”

Eddie gives Richie a look like he’s lost his mind - mostly because it seems like he has.

“Hey, Eds. Come on. Call her.” He reaches over and grabs Eddie’s hand. “Together, right? We stick together, we can do anything.”

It seems fucking stupid. It might be exactly what he needs. Eddie grabs his phone from his bedside table, and he pulls up Myra’s contact, and he calls her.

As soon as she answers, she starts babbling. He hasn’t called her in two days now, not since the first night. He looks over and sees Richie again, still looking at him, and it centers him.

“Myra. Listen to me. I’m not coming home.”

She gets hysterical, and then nasty, and Eddie uses Richie as an anchor and tries as hard as he can to stay calm, but soon she’s hurling insults and slurs at him, saying she always knew and his mother had always warned her, and that’s when he hangs up.

He puts the phone down, and stares at it. “She’s gonna throw all my stuff in the street - there’s no way I can go get it, so my luggage is basically all I’ve got. I’m just homeless. I was a risk analyst in New York and now I’m homeless and probably fired because I told work I’d be back sooner than this.”

“You did it, though,” Richie tells him with a smile. He squeezes Eddie’s hand, and Eddie can only smile back.

“Well, yeah. With your help, though. And you - I never would have made it out if you hadn’t pulled me down in the sewer. How’d you know to do that?”

Richie glances over towards the wall. “I, uh. Didn’t?”

“What do you mean?”

“Look, it was a moment, it wasn’t like. We don’t have to talk about it, I didn’t see anything, though, I just woke up and you were there and I felt like I was dying but then I wasn’t because you saved my life, so I was just-”

“I thought you were gonna kiss me.”

Richie freezes, and looks at him. “What?”

“I… don’t think I can say it again, but that’s what I thought. Then I thought you just saw that it was gonna stab me and tried to get me out of the way, but that wasn’t my first thought.”

“Look, Eds, I don’t-”

Whatever Richie’s going to say, Eddie doesn’t want to hear it. He’s left his wife, he’s lost his job probably, he doesn’t have anywhere else to go or anything to lose, and he’s had the longest fucking day of his entire life, so he reaches over and puts his hand on Richie’s neck and kisses him. He pulls back almost immediately to say, “Look, if you’re gonna hit me,”

Richie says, “Shut the fuck up,” and then kisses him again, pressing their lips together, lingering this time.

They’re both still pretty gross, but there’s something pretty fantastic about the scratch of Richie’s stubble against his face and the awkward press of glasses in between them. Richie’s curls brush against the tips of his fingers and Eddie pushes his hand up, running his fingers through Richie’s hair - something he’s pretty sure he’s wanted to do since he was 13.

They break apart eventually, both breathing a little heavier, looking at each other cautiously, gauging reactions.

No one seems to be freaking out.

“You should come with me on tour,” Richie tells him.

Eddie blinks. “Okay.”

As it turns out, it’s really that simple. They both get real showers and get properly cleaned up. They see Bev and Ben off first, then Bill, then Mike. Mike is staying for a little longer, just to pack, so they don’t say goodbye to him until they’re leaving themselves.

The two of them put all their luggage in Richie’s car, and take Eddie’s rental car back. On the way out of Derry, Richie stops at the kissing bridge.

“Is there a reason we’re here? Because I know what I said about being afraid to leave but now that we’re all out and proud and alive and it doesn’t seem like some kind of memory curse is gonna put me back in the misery closet for another 27 years I’d really love to get the fuck out of-”

“Shut the fuck up, c’mere.”

Richie pulls him over, and there on the bridge, in fading, carved letters, is R+E.

Eddie blinks at it.

“You remember- you remember when I told you leaving made me forget how I realized I was gay? I meant that it made me forget you. You made me realize. You were like. The love of my teenage life.”

Eddie looks over at Richie, and then back at the bridge. It’s precisely the kind of shit Richie would have done as a kid, of course, that Eddie never would have had the guts to do.

Not anymore, though.

“You bring a knife?” Eddie asks.

Richie hands it to him, and Eddie kneels down. Right next to the old one, just below and to the right, Eddie carves his own, E+R.

“There. Now we’re actually in alphabetical order, dipshit.”

“God you’re so fucking annoying,” Richie tells him, but he pulls him in and kisses him anyways, right there on the kissing bridge, right there in Derry - right there in the town that made them forget and tried to kill them and kept them apart for 27 years.

Eddie kind of feels the urge to flip off the entire town - so as they’re driving away, he does.

“Fuck this place.”

“Yeah, no, we’re never coming back. Loser’s club reunions can happen literally anywhere else.”

Eddie reaches over and takes Richie’s hand while he’s driving, and he forces himself not to think about the accident statistics of driving one-handed - at least until they’re outside the Derry city limits.

**Author's Note:**

> yeah so uhhhhh thanks bill hader and james ransone we could have had it all, my life is ruined, i hope this was cathartic for other people also. thanks for reading!
> 
> if you're also a just be still with me reader: this is not the part 2 of that fic, this is lkajsdf an additional fix it i've written, obviously, because i just wanted to give myself more work i guess lkajsdf rip.


End file.
